JLester73 / ps2cando

PowerSchool to Cando

NOTICE These files and scripts are provided without any assurances that they will work properly in your environment. There is also no guarantee that something won't get messed up in either PowerSchool or Cando by using this project. Use at your own risk, understand what the commands will be doing, and use in a test environment if possible!

Background This program was created by Chris Edwards of Washington County Public Schools in Virginia. The original version wrote out the CSV files required for import into the Cando project.

The program was updated recently to work with the newer XLS import process required for Cando by Jason Lester, also of Washingon County Schools.

Description These scripts export out the students, teachers, courses, and sections from PowerSchool that are required for the Cando project in the state of Virginia (http://www.cteresource.org/CanDo/).

Release The latest version is always available on Github from: https://github.com/JLester73/ps2cando

Requirements We run the scripts on a Debian Linux server. It should theoretically work on any system that supports Ruby, but we have not tested on anything else. You will need to have Ruby, Rake, and Oracle's InstantClient all installed and working properly. Installing and configuring those is mostly outside the scope of this document except where it applies specifically to these scripts.

Dependencies:

• Ruby 1.9 or higher
• Rake 0.8.7 or higher
• A Unix/Linux-like environment
• Oracle Instantclient
• PowerSchool v8 or higher (tested all the way to 10.0.2)

Ruby Dependencies:

• Log4r Gem
• OCI8 Ruby Library for Oracle (compiled against your instantclient)
• Spreadsheet Gem
• YAML Gem

Setup

• Unzip the package onto the sytem that will be running it. We use a special user account called "data" on our server and place each script in that user's home directory. This one would be in /home/data/ps2cando for example.
• Edit the "Rakefile" and make sure the year is set correctly. For the 2016-2017 school year, it should be set to 2017.
• Edit the input-teachers.csv.example file and add your teachers who will be using Cando. The file should have their employee number from PowerSchool, then their last name (in quotes), and their first name (in quotes) with commas between. An example is in the file already. Save it as input-teachers.csv
• For the Oracle instantclient, you will need to configure a tnsnames.ora file to tell the client how to locate your PowerSchool Oracle DB server. It will look something like this:

---

PSPRODDB =
  (DESCRIPTION =
     (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 192.168.1.1)(PORT = 1521))
     (CONNECT_DATA =
       (SERVER = DEDICATED)
       (SERVICE_NAME = PSPRODDB)
     )
   )

---

PSPRODDB is what we're calling the service when we call it in Ruby. Host should be set to your server's IP address and Service_Name should be set to the PowerSchool database's server instance (normally PSPRODDB).

• Edit the /config/ps2cando.yaml.example file to update your login and password information for your PowerSchool Oracle database. We recommend using the psnavigator account since it has read-only access to your database. Update the three lines to match your installation and save the file as ps2cando.yaml.

Usage The rake program is used to build the files and to clean the directory in preparation for a new build. Always clean the directory before running a new build or you will have duplicate entries.

• Clean the directory by running "rake clobber". This will delete all files that were written out by the build process.
• Run the build by running "rake". It will show you what it is doing as it. runs. A line will be output for each teacher as it exports the teachers, students, courses, and sections. When it finishes, it sorts some files and deletes temporary files. It then runs another script that converts the CSV files to the required XLS files. When finished, you should have these output files ready for import into Cando:
  • 01-students.xls
  • 02-teachers.xls
  • 03-courses.xls
  • 04-section_enrollment.xls
• Copy the four files to a Windows computer that has Office installed.
• Open each file with Excel, you may get an error, but that is OK. It is caused by a limitation of the Ruby Excel output formatter. Save each file without changing anything to get rid of the error.
• Import the files following the instructions in the Cando documentation. You will still need to create your terms and resources (schools) manually.